Some very good news amidst the madness……. During my UCL metascience talk and a couple of other posts on this blog where I explored the need for new kinds of labs with radically different incentives, career paths, and funding approaches, I alluded to something very exciting that would be being announced in the US.
Are we just lacking interesting rich people in the UK then? The self-interest and misalignment of scientific funding re: actual progress vs publications/ prestige makes getting traditional sources on board difficult for a project like this but I guess the existence of similar barriers in the US is what's driving Schmidt to fund this kind of thing. He's putting his own money behind Future House, Arc is funded by the Stripe lads and Crypto winners - are government or typical US scientific funding bodies also backing these or is it all private capital?
I'm sure to be "world beating" and competitive (pound for pound) with the $Billions sloshing around in the US it would require UK government to get its act together which I'm not hugely optimistic about, but given our lack of non-boring billionaires (not real estate magnates) it looks like they'll have to. Future House will hopefully provide an example to point to of a functional new way. It's frustrating and envy inducing because $20 million pounds is a lot of money but it's not A LOT of money, all things considered. The MRC writes multiple cheques for microscopes and equipment in the £100Ks every year, I wonder how far even 10% of what Schmidt is spending could go. It also isn't like there's a lack of young, ambitious scientific talent in the UK. 100s of post-docs would knife their PI to work somewhere like Future House.
I'm not doubting the herculean efforts you must have already made when in government, but if an angel came to your room tonight and said "James mate, God says it's Your Mission to set up an FRO/your Lovelace Lab in the UK.", do you currently see any path at all between ossified government/funding bodies and (I assume) pretty gun-shy, profit-driven private capital to get it off the ground? Am I too naively optimistic about the UK to think this doesn't seem impossible?
Are we just lacking interesting rich people in the UK then? The self-interest and misalignment of scientific funding re: actual progress vs publications/ prestige makes getting traditional sources on board difficult for a project like this but I guess the existence of similar barriers in the US is what's driving Schmidt to fund this kind of thing. He's putting his own money behind Future House, Arc is funded by the Stripe lads and Crypto winners - are government or typical US scientific funding bodies also backing these or is it all private capital?
I'm sure to be "world beating" and competitive (pound for pound) with the $Billions sloshing around in the US it would require UK government to get its act together which I'm not hugely optimistic about, but given our lack of non-boring billionaires (not real estate magnates) it looks like they'll have to. Future House will hopefully provide an example to point to of a functional new way. It's frustrating and envy inducing because $20 million pounds is a lot of money but it's not A LOT of money, all things considered. The MRC writes multiple cheques for microscopes and equipment in the £100Ks every year, I wonder how far even 10% of what Schmidt is spending could go. It also isn't like there's a lack of young, ambitious scientific talent in the UK. 100s of post-docs would knife their PI to work somewhere like Future House.
I'm not doubting the herculean efforts you must have already made when in government, but if an angel came to your room tonight and said "James mate, God says it's Your Mission to set up an FRO/your Lovelace Lab in the UK.", do you currently see any path at all between ossified government/funding bodies and (I assume) pretty gun-shy, profit-driven private capital to get it off the ground? Am I too naively optimistic about the UK to think this doesn't seem impossible?